Home Front
by Lisse
Summary: The 'what if JK Rowling had written about ninjas' fic. Naruto & Harry Potter crack fusion...thing. Mostly Naruto.


Disclaimer: I own neither _Harry Potter_ nor _Naruto_. Written for fun, not profit.

Six moments from the first six HP books - or at least their ninja equivalents. Takes place in the same universe as "Three Good Reasons," although it can be read separately. I'm leaving it in the Naruto section because it's more of a fusion than a crossover, and far more ninja than wizard.

_home front_

i.

Kamajirushi Izou can't remember the last time he saw the world the way normal people do. He's worn some kind of blindfold for longer than he can remember - maybe since the night his parents died, when his mother drew a seal on his forehead and triggered a bloodline limit he still doesn't know how to deactivate.

But he doesn't care about that now. He doesn't care that he's in the deepest vaults of his village's precious library, or that this will probably get him kicked out of the academy. What matters to Izou is that he is clutching the Three Forbidden Scrolls in his hands and that a spy - one of his own teachers - is trying to steal it.

When he rips his blindfold away from his eyes, the library's protective jutsus begin to twist and the seals on the scrolls start to unravel and melt. He'll probably be in trouble for that later, but for now he feels the spy's chakra sputter and slip and blur at the edges, and he does the only thing he can think of.

He ducks his head and charges.

ii.

"This is stupid," Shuzaya Rokuro says. His voice is shaking just a little and his chakra is knotted up. "This is _stupid_."

"You said that already." Izou tucks his hands further inside his sleeves to hide just how tightly he's holding his kunai. "I'm trying to listen, you know."

"Right. Sorry." There is a long, tense pause. "Did I mention this is stupid?"

Izou grimaces and carefully shifts his weight. They're walking over uneven ground now, and even with chakra to keep his footing and four senses to tell him where to step, it's still very easy to trip. "You mean the part where we're meeting a missing-nin?"

"I mean the part where he's a missing-nin who can summon _giant spiders_."

"I'd notice before he summoned anything." Probably.

He can almost hear Rokuro roll his eyes. "Sure you would."

"What, you don't trust me?"

"Not with spiders," Rokuro mutters. "No offense."

iii.

Izou's father wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place - not as long as he had a summoning scroll. A drop of blood, a few quick handseals, and Kamajirushi Shinsui would have dropped an entire herd of cranky deer on anyone incautious enough to venture into range.

But Izou is not his father. Izou is just a frightened thirteen-year-old boy with hardly any chakra left and two teammates and a jounin sensei to protect. When he slams his hands down for the hundredth time, he isn't hoping for a herd of animals to show up and finish off the enemies.

At this point, he'd settle for being like his father just long enough to summon one.

iv.

"It's a modified dislocation jutsu," Godzume Hamusha says. "Get that seal reversed and it should send us back to the village."

"What about them?" Izou nods his head towards the others - he's not sure if they're missing-nin, but their chakra is twisted and strange and makes his stomach turn.

He hears the faint clink of metal as Hamusha readies his shuriken. "Just work on the seal," he says, and maybe later Izou will realize that he sounds a little too calm - that he's the one who can see the missing-nins' faces. "I'm the chuunin here. I'll handle them."

v.

"These are the maps to our new training grounds." Nouka Kochiki drops the stack of papers in the middle of the floor, apparently oblivious to the small avalanche she's created. "They're confidential, of course. If you think yours is going to be discovered, concentrate your chakra like _this_ - " there is a brief flare and the sharp smell of something burning - "and it will self-destruct."

Izou stirs the ashes with his finger. "And the catching-fire part?"

"It doubles as a weapon," Kochiki says, as if this is the most obvious conclusion in the world and _honestly_, some people have no imagination.

Rokuro whistles under his breath. "Anyone ever tell you you're scary?"

"I'd better be after all that work," Kochiki says.

vi.

Just once, Izou wishes that his teammates would listen to reason.

"I'm _leaving_," he says, slowly and clearly so they'll understand. "I'll be a missing-nin."

He hears Kochiki huff and shift her weight on the ground - she's probably got her hands on her hips - and before she even opens her mouth, he knows what she's going to say. "A team is more effective than a solo operative. Weren't you paying attention at the academy?"

"You'd walk into a tree without us," Rokuro says.

Izou sighs and ducks his head. "I can't talk you out of this?"

"Absolutely not," Kochiki says. That seems to be the end of the argument as far as she's concerned.

"Teammates, remember?" And there's probably no hope of talking sense into Rokuro either.

Izou knows he could knock them both out and leave the village alone - but he also knows that they'd just follow him anyway, whether he wanted them to or not, and he wishes he knew how to thank them for that.

Instead he turns back toward the gate and squares his shoulders, just like he would for any mission.

"Okay," he says. "Let's go."


End file.
